Browser’s Magnificent Seven

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JEdgar 7.45pm beIN Movies Stars

A TELLING portrait of one of the most controversial figures in American public life in the 20th century. J Edgar Hoover founded and ran the Federal Bureau of Investigation for almost 40 years.

His business was to know the nation’s secrets and some Presidents were blackmailed into doing his bidding. Leonardo DiCaprio gives a towering performance as Hoover, from fresh-faced lawman to aged despot. In 2011, director Clint Eastwood presented a warts and all profile of a flawed law enforcer.

Hoover liked dressing as a woman and holding hands with Clyde Tolson, alias Arnie Hammer, his right-hand man at the bureau. As a young man, Edgar was dominated by his overpowering mom, played by Judi Dench.

Hoover was a reactionary who tried to get Martin Luther King to refuse the Nobel Peace Prize. On the plus side he created the FBI as a meritocracy with an emphasis upon scientific investigation.

TimeOut said: “A pleasing, intelligent film happy to describe Hoover’s behaviour as monstrous but too balanced and searching to damn him as a monster. Sympathetic both to Hoover’s ambition and patriotism and his personal dynamics.”